The Hidden Weight Behind Harmless Questions

A heavily pregnant woman stands in front of a window holding her older child

It’s a question I get asked more often than you might think. Always gently, sometimes hesitantly: “Did you know before he was born?”

No, we didn’t. And honestly, it wouldn’t have made any difference.

Elias leads a different life, one filled with challenges, yes, but also with joy, mischief, stubbornness, laughter, and love. I can’t imagine the world without him in it. So when someone asks if we knew, I always wonder what they’re really asking.

Is it curiosity? Empathy? Or something a little heavier: “Would you have… done something differently?”

It’s a loaded question, because the subtext is uncomfortable. We don’t like to say it out loud, but it hovers there: Would you have chosen not to have him?

And I understand where it comes from. There’s fear in the unknown. Before Elias was born, I had no concept of what “complex needs” really meant. We weren’t prepared, not even close. But then again, what parent truly is?

Elias’s genetic condition, CHARGE syndrome, isn’t inherited. Yet we have a 1 in 100 chance of it happening again. When I was 11 weeks pregnant with his younger brother, we went through the risky, painful process of genetic testing, not because we were trying to prevent another child like Elias, but because we wanted to know. Knowledge, we thought, might give us a sense of control in a life that had already taught us how little of that we truly have.

But here’s the thing: being armed with that knowledge doesn’t really change the truth. Life doesn’t come with guarantees. Parenting certainly doesn’t. What it does come with, if you’re lucky, is perspective.

And my perspective now is simple: every child changes you, but a child like Elias rewrites your definition of what’s important. And our family, our love, our resilience, they exist in this exact shape because Elias has made it that way.

So no, we didn’t know before he was born. But knowing wouldn’t have changed a thing.

Because even when things look a little different from the way you imagined, it's still means everything to you.